Acquiring and Spending Warlords of Draenor Valor

Valor is a new currency coming in World of Warcraft Patch 6.2.3 which allows you to upgrade Hellfire Citadel, Tanaan Jungle, Crafted, and Draenor Dungeon items. This guide covers how to acquire and spend Valor.

The maximum you could acquire per week is 700 from Heroic Dungeons + 2400 from Mythic Dungeons + 500 from event + 750 from Hellfire LFR + 525 from Highmaul/Foundry LFR = 4875.

There is no hard weekly Valor cap, but the activities are not infinitely repeatable. The most efficient thing to do is to run Mythic Dungeons, and the least efficient thing to do is to run Highmaul or Foundry LFR.

The total Valor cap is 5,000, so if you obtain a lot in one week, you must spend it quickly.

See what loot is eligible for upgrades with our Can Be Upgraded filter. Hit the "Upgrade 1" or 2 checkbox on item pages to see what the upgraded stats on an item is.

You will need 0 Valor total to upgrade a full set of gear (16 items, 2 upgrades each). If you really wanted to, you could grind this out in two weeks. If you are not upgrading everything at once, here are some general pointers to follow:

Upgrade items with the most power/budget on stats, such as weapons, helms, chests, interesting trinkets, and legs.

Necks, rings (the legendary ring cannot be upgraded), capes and wrists are the weakest items.

Upgrade items you are less likely to replace--eg an item from the highest difficulty of raiding you're doing, a maxed-out crafted piece, an item with Warforged/socket additions, an item with a significantly higher item level than the rest of your gear.

Where to upgrade:

Item upgrade vendors are found in Orgrimmar, Stormwind, Stormshield, and Warspear by the Void Storage/Transmogrification Ethereals.

Blue Posts

Developer Explanation:

Blizzard

Dungeon content shines when its difficulty is appropriate to players’ power level, so Mythic dungeons will be the most lucrative source of Valor for players who have items from Tanaan or Hellfire Citadel. For those who are still gearing up to tackle Mythic dungeons, or who prefer to use queued matchmaking, Raid Finder wings and the first Heroic dungeon each day will also provide Valor, as will most of Seer Kazal’s weekly event quests. Ethereal Voidbinders have made their way through time and space to Stormshield and Warspear, as well as returning to Orgrimmar and Stormwind, to allow players to use this Valor to upgrade their gear by up to 10 item levels. We decided to go with item upgrades rather than a Valor vendor because item upgrades offer power that complements items from other sources rather than competing with them.

Blizzard later explained their philosophy behind this new Valor system:

Watcher

A hard cap on earning Valor (or any currency) essentially sets a weekly benchmark, and falling short of that benchmark leaves you feeling like you've left something on the table. If we artificially cap earning at 1000/week, then we're saying it takes ~8 weeks to fully upgrade your gear, assuming "maximum" effort each week. If you miss a week, then you're a week "behind." If you're busy, or sick, or just don't feel like it, and you fall a bit short of the cap one week, then you are delaying completion by precisely that amount. The existence of the cap makes the whole thing feel more mandatory in a sense, with motivation level then plummeting the moment you hit that weekly cap. Despite all these reasons, sometimes we do need caps as a pacing mechanism, particularly early in an expansion or where the impact on player power is massive (e.g. buying Conquest gear in a new arena season).

Without a cap, there's an inherent diminishing return curve at play. You can start off doing the most efficient and engaging activities first, until you've exhausted those, leaving you with activities that are progressively less efficient and/or less suited to your playstyle preferences, combined with the fact that you also inherently are exhausting your free time as you go, with your remaining time presumably becoming more valuable as it dwindles. At some point, you generally hit a threshold where the reward for the next incremental activity no longer seems worth the time investment required, and you're done for the week. For many people, that threshold will be reached at lower than 1000 VP per week, and their experience is no different whether or not there's a cap. For others, that threshold will be reached at a point above 1000 VP, and the lack of a cap gives them the freedom to decide when they're done rather than having it dictated to them. Some will benefit from the fact that they're allowed to convert a weekend of free time into a bunch of Valor to make up for that week when they were busy or traveling, coming out even or ahead rather than being permanently "behind" due to a cap.

(The particular nature of Valor upgrades also adds another element of diminishing returns - your first 2k Valor will likely go into your weapons and trinkets. After that, every additional point of Valor you earn is progressively less impactful as you work your way down from chest/helm, to gloves, to bracers.)

In this case, we opted for the design that offers more freedom to select the sources of Valor that most suit your preferred playstyle, goals, and available time. If you're into Mythic dungeons, then Mythic dungeons are going to be by far the most lucrative source of Valor, and should let you cover your needs quickly. But for players who don't want to run Mythic dungeons, queued alternatives (such as Heroics and Raid Finder) allow for a way to still earn Valor.

I understand the sense of obligation to maximize performance in a competitive raid environment, but the game asks competitive raiders to make those choices constantly: do you craft every upgrade at the first opportunity, use the best gems in items you might replace soon, use the best food or Augment Runes on every pull, keep running lower difficulties on the off-chance of a Warforged/socketed perfect drop that could be an upgrade, keep up with multiple specs or alts to allow you to optimize for specific encounters, and so forth?

Virtually everyone draws a line somehow and compromises in most of these areas, making a judgment about the point at which further expense (whether of gold, or time, or effort) is no longer worth the benefit. This system presents another one of those choices. The need to "save players from themselves" is a familiar refrain - but past experience has shown that people are better at managing their schedules and gameplay choices than many of the comments in this thread would suggest.The focus of the patch is on dungeon content. Raid Finder was included as a source to add a few more options for Group Finder queuing, and if getting a few well-geared tanks and healers to hop back into Raid Finder improves queues a bit for the core Raid Finder audience, that's not the worst thing in the world. But if you hate Raid Finder, there are literally thousands of Valor available weekly without setting foot in Raid Finder.

Part of the point is to provide a reason to revisit content that you may not have had much reason to do in a while, rather than just providing an extra reward for continuing your existing routine.

Comment by 1und2

Comment by kevdotcom

Too bad the item upgrade checkbox is not working...

Comment by SaruhanM

Can mythic Dungeon Loot be upgraded?

Comment by Reddervish

Will warforged items be upgradeable? for instance the ilvl 711 drops from Kazzak or other bosses? The guide specifically says ilvl 705, so I will presume not until hearing otherwise. It would be nice though.

Comment by likwidd

Excellent guide, thanks a lot!

Comment by MasterIzumi

Will the achievements for acquiring certain amounts of Valor be brought back as well? I was very sad when it was removed with me at 49.5k =(

Comment by frmorrison

Stat Budget - how each item uses the item budget to get its stats, based on a 2H taking two items worth of budget:

Therefore, for the same cost of 500 valor points, upgrading a weapon will boost your stats more than upgrading a neck.

After looking at that list pick your BiS items, which are basically the highest tier you have access to while taking into account warforged/sockets. Another thing to consider is item level does not raise your stats linearly, it scales around the power of 1.0094. For example, upgrading an item level 700 to 715 gives 48 to your main stat, while upgrading the same item from level 715 to 730 gives 55 to your main stat. So pick the highest starting item level in each tier.

My plan, as a spec swapping player, is to upgrade items used in both specs first so I will upgrade my BiS tier gear (helm and legs), class trinket and then the weaker tier gear (chest and gloves). That costs 2500 valor, which could be done by completing all the Mythic dungeons plus the first random heroic of the day.

Comment by saiga19

What does this part exactly mean?

(The particular nature of Valor upgrades also adds another element of diminishing returns - your first 2k Valor will likely go into your weapons and trinkets. After that, every additional point of Valor you earn is progressively less impactful as you work your way down from chest/helm, to gloves, to bracers.)

Comment by tforce65

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but what is the "weekly bonus quest" that awards 500 valor ?

Comment by Bubshell

Comment by concordantnexus

Is it only the stuff that the ShadowMoon Refugee gives you for TimeWalking, pet battling, or doing BGs? Or are there other quests that qualify?

Comment by Duraic

gotta question about the valor upgrade if anyone knows... if you upgrade a crafted piece thats only like lvl 5/6 if you use the savage essence things does it still only bump to 705 or 715?

Comment by coolfreezer

Upgrades can be done in the Shrines in Vale of Eternal Blossoms too.

Comment by Terrethgraven

Does anyone know if you upgrade a crafted item at say 5/6 and then you upgrade it to the next tier 6/6 will you have to start over leveling it with valor back to 2/2 or will the valor upgrades move over to the improved item?